Cheap Trick releases an album on 8-Track

The latest cheap trick from Can-rockers Cheap Trick is an album released on an 8-track tape. Bah! My album will be released in the form of incidental grooving on the side of a thrown pot made in the style of ancient Greek potters!

As you might imagine, finding a manufacturer today for the 8-track version of Cheap Trick's The Latest wasn't easy. "There was a lot of looking under rocks," admits Frey, who finally found a small plant in Dallas, Tex., for the retro-fit. "They're expensive to make, and they don't make very many at a time," he says of the cartridge which will sell to the public for something close to $30.

The new album, issued on Cheap Trick's own label, is comprised of 12 songs broken into four sets of three songs each - suites that unfortunately don't fit nicely into the four 10-minute programs of standard 8-tracks, but which may be available at some point as a three-for-the-price-of-one deal on iTunes. As Frey explains the discount, "We're kind of more worried about being ignored than being ripped off."

And that I suspect the folks that made the 8 track cartrdige were able to retrofit machines like those used in radio stations for commercials (the “carts” you sometimes hear DJs talking about)… While the digital revolution has hit the radio business, I think there is still an industry around those cartridges…

Contrary to what the article sez, the 8-track medium is more than adequate to hold an CD’s worth of music. In fact, you could put an hour or more of music on a cartridge if you loaded the cartridge with enough tape. The original design was intended for playing long background music recordings, not albums. Ultimately, of course, most commercial 8-tracks were released as alternatives to LP records, which were limited to about 40 minutes of music, so 8-tracks rarely contained more than 40 minutes worth of tape.

here’s the thing: sure, they’re releasing it on 8-track… but the article says that the album doesn’t even fit well on the format! why on earth would they release it on 8-track if they weren’t prepared to do a good job?

I never heard of 4-tracks, so I googled, and found out that there were briefly 4-tracks, but they appear to have been an evolutionary step towards 8-tracks.

My personal experience with music technolgy biased me to think Dorothy was writing about 4-track recorders, like the Tascam 414 cassette recorder/mixer all-in-one, which records all four tracks at once by using both the stereo L+R channels from the A side and the B side at the same time.

Timothy Hutton: “I think the answer is to have excellent musicians in front of the mics, a good engineer behind the console, and a strong idea of what you want before you start.”

Very, very true! But it can be a hard lesson to learn. There’s an appeal to having things emerge spontaneously/organically/surprisingly as you go along, but mostly this just leads to muddled projects.

The other hard lesson I’ve had to learn over and over again: Less is more. In my experience, most of the time it’s better to fix a piece by taking something away (a track, some measures, a process or effect) rather than adding something.

Except as an “any publicity is good publicity” publicity stunt, I don’t get it.

Unlike bands that release things on vinyl, they can’t possibly float the claim that the 8-track medium offers any inherent fidelity advantages over other media.

If they are going for the (very) retro nostalgia market, they would do much better with regular cassette tapes, since they are much cheaper to produce, and since retro nostalgia fans are much more likely to have a functioning cassette player than a functioning 8-track.

Maybe they are hoping to go down in history as the last commercial 8-track ever produced, but I don’t see much margin in that.

8-trak quality varied greatly, but good ones did and still do sound better than any MP3 or FM radio, and I still buy’m and play’m. I actually started with them just as they were closing out in the mid eighties. They are cheap and so I’ve discovered a lot of music I might have missed. I’m am also now probably the best 8-trak cartridge repair person in the world, having put about 85 cartridges back on the road.
hi fi snock

I had a less fancy version of that “back in the day.” It was my first home studio. One spent a lot of time bouncing down the tracks, thinking “How the hell did George Martin do this and make it seem so easy?!”

I bet I could still find some of my 4-track cassettes if I went digging. It would be a snap to convert these to digital too. Just record left and right from the cassette playing both ways, reverse the two backward tracks, and line them up.

I was watching some video online of the place that makes the Cheap Trick 8-tracks, and the decks they use to make the tapes are all different, like 6 different tape decks all different brands. Each deck records different than the other-what a fiasco ! At least they could use all the same brand machines so all the tapes sound the same ? For $30/each the tapes should be consistent, not half assedly recorded. They have some hole in the wall place run by some joker named Dan Gibson making them, the guy is a first class jerk. He’s ripped off many people in the collectible 8-track tape hobby and can’t be trusted, he gives out the personal contact info of his customers and harasses them online, and with prank phone calls. Beware, the guy making these tapes is someone to be avoided. Cheap Trick obviously doesn’t know the history of this Gibson guy- he’s not well liked in the 8-track collector circles.

Do not move Rockford, Il into Canada. Rockford is a fun place (I love playing at Kryptonite when I pass through) and deserves credit for Cheap Trick. It is also home to the driving force behind Lizard Skynard (Mossy Vaughn) and spawned the Heavils.

This statement,

“We’re kind of more worried about being ignored than being ripped off.”

reflects the attitude that many more people in the industry should (IMO) embrace.

Finally, Rick Nielsen is one of the nicest rock stars I have had the pleasure of (briefly) meeting and working with.

Of course this is a publicity stunt! Who would be talking about Cheap Trick’s latest album if it came out on any other format (other than maybe as a digital download that came with a property purchase in Rockford.

I work at Invisible Records in Chicago with Martin Atkins. His band Pigface decided to release their latest album, “6”, on 8-track about 7 months ago… You can check out the video announcement here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoKkdji75-k) . Maybe it’s a coincidence that both these bands had the same idea, but I think something must be in the water in Northern Illinois that’s making all these bands make CRAZY decisions.

All kinds of hipsters, tech geeks, nostalgiacs, and music snobs have working 8 track players – and the combined interest among them in buying a new release is probably greater than the combined interest the world had in buying a new Cheap Trick CD. Also, as anyone making money in music can tell you, the profits come from merchandising and sales of physical artificats. Releasing this would be a smart move, IMO.

But it looks like it’s not actually going to be for sale – just a promo-only for the “Classic Rock” record stations who, to be honest, were not going to play their new songs anyway. IMO, a very gentle F.U. to the industry from a cheeky, classy, classic act.

This is one item that need not be rated on technological merit. The 8-track had, and still has, a wuzzy place in the hearts of many late -70s barefoot teens wandering along Chicago’s Southshore Beach of Lake Michigan, listening to Rick, Robin, Tom and Bun E. under the summer sun, some having just heard them play live at Mother’s the night before, so . . . hold on a sec . . . that’s not sobbing, I have to sneeze and I have the hiccups, just FYI.
The 8-track release is another terrific idea on the nostalgic, novelty and publicity levels from a band that’s been faithful to its Midwestern/Chicago roots throughout its existence. Rock on boyz!

My dad’s 1979 Ford pickup is in fact still running, and has a built in 8-track player. It doesn’t sound, terrible exactly… but it’s not, you know, good. I’m not sure if the 8-track being new would help that at all.

8-Track home players are still one of the most widely sold used stereo components – available at swap meets and thrift stores. Going price: about five bucks

My first stereo system (bought by mom at Sears) was a combo AM/FM tuner with an 8-Track…only ever had 3 or 4 cartridges including Johnny Winter, Aerosmith…and various artists LIVE at Isle of Wight (1970)

The sound was always a bit bass-y and the fade-outs and clicks and thuds were hard to take. 8-Track was (and is…) definitely more of an experience in the car, where audio deficiencies are masked by the traffic

4-Track cartridges were around a long time, at least five years.

The unassuming 8-Track Heaven has the best information regarding 8-Tracks…seems as if many old 8-Track cartridges came with music not featured on standard LPs (transition music, etc)

Hey what about 1/4 inch Reel-to-Reel.
I have some tapes here, but wher the heck is that deck?

They are the heck all over the place, my friend. Do an ebay search for “reel to reel deck” and you’ll get over a hundred, everything from consumer hi-fi stereo decks to pro decks to “Mission: Impossible”-style portables. I even have an 8-track open reel 1/4″ deck (that’s 8 tracks for multitracking, not “8-track” like an 8-track cartridge).

I had a less fancy version of that “back in the day.” It was my first home studio. One spent a lot of time bouncing down the tracks, thinking “How the hell did George Martin do this and make it seem so easy?!”

Bruce Springsteen recorded demo version of his solo “Nebraska” album on a four-track cassette recorder (like the Tascam I mentioned) at home and legend has it brought the demo tape in to the record company in a pocket in his denim jacket unprotected (no case) and they ultimately decided to use that tape (cleaned up, but otherwise as-is) instead of the “big band” version recorded with The E Street Band…

I think the answer is to have excellent musicians in front of the mics, a good engineer behind the console, and a strong idea of what you want before you start. Too many weaker performers attempt to “find” their song at the mixing console, after it is recorded… (That’s my opinion, anyways)